Double Secret iPod Tax

From Instapundit:

"MORE ON TENNESSEE'S IPOD TAX, which seems to have encountered some awkwardness. "It looks like the Bredesen administration has been illegally collecting sales tax on music downloads since Jan. 1, 2008, and that Farr is now pushing 'technical correction' legislation to amend the tax code in order to make legal the tax they're already collecting." If this turns out to be the case, it's a bit of an embarrassment."

This is more than just an embarrassment. Bredesen can probably kiss goodbye any chance at being Obama's VP.

Do you think those legions of current iPod-owning Obama supporters in the 18-25 year old range will sit still if Obama were to select someone who oversaw a secret, illegal tax on music downloads?!?

Imagine if George McGovern had selected a running mate who had secretly been taxing marijuana sales in his state (y'know, instead of someone who had received electroshock therapy), the kids would have rioted!

Fun with Polls - Round 2

A few days ago I posted about some of the internal absurdities of an Ipsos/AP poll that had Hillary 9 points ahead of McCain.

I also saw a similar CBS poll that I did not have time to comment on.

Fortunately, David Freddoso over at National Review wrote a pretty good take-down of this poll in The Corner today. While I was concentrating on the various small points that I think added up to a skewing of the data, Freddoso focused on the ever important sample.

"This poll was conducted among a random sample of 671 adults nationwide." Very funny! Not likely voters, not even registered voters, but adults. This is the same flaw that was present in the recent ABC poll that showed Hillary 9 points ahead. I do not understand why such polls are even conducted — even if it is cheaper, it is still a waste of money.....There is no point in criticizing a poll for its results, but methodology is fair game. Even the use of "registered voters" instead of "likely voters" is highly suspect and tends to produce bad results.

This is of course the common sense analysis, that most in the media never seem to do.

I hope that Freddoso and others will make this poll analysis a regular feature of their election coverage. I will try my best, but soon my happy ass will be in a war zone, and my attention span will not be guaranteed.

Green Genocide

More fun from Europe:

At the request of the Swiss government, an ethics panel has weighed in on the “dignity” of plants and opined that the arbitrary killing of flora is morally wrong. This is no hoax. The concept of what could be called “plant rights” is being seriously debated.

see-dubya at Michelle Malkin says:

Sure, you vegans thought yourselves so morally pure. But according to the Swiss government, your hands are stained with the chlorophyll of innocent beings.

So this leads me to a couple of questions...

1 - Does this make the Haitians progressive for eating dirt cookies?

2 - Will it be considered a 'Crime against Horticulture' to use Ethanol in your car?

I can see the protest signs now..."Save the Plants, Burn Oil!!"

However when it comes to food, I guess we will have to resort to more dramatic measures....

Coming Election Lies Part 2

The WSJ brings this fun news from Liberal Fantasy Tax Land:

Windfall Profits for Dummies

This is one strange debate the candidates are having on energy policy. With gas prices close to $4 a gallon, Hillary Clinton and John McCain say they'll bring relief with a moratorium on the 18.4-cent federal gas tax. Barack Obama opposes that but prefers a 1970s-style windfall profits tax (as does Mrs. Clinton).

Mr. Obama is right to oppose the gas-tax gimmick, but his idea is even worse. Neither proposal addresses the problem of energy supply, especially the lack of domestic oil and gas thanks to decades of Congressional restrictions on U.S. production. Mr. Obama supports most of those "no drilling" rules, but that hasn't stopped him from denouncing high gas prices on the campaign trail. He is running TV ads in North Carolina that show him walking through a gas station and declaring that he'll slap a tax on the $40 billion in "excess profits" of Exxon Mobil.

The idea is catching on. Last week Pennsylvania Congressman Paul Kanjorski introduced a windfall profits tax as part of what he called the "Consumer Reasonable Energy Price Protection Act of 2008." So now we have Congress threatening to help itself to business profits even though Washington already takes 35% right off the top with the corporate income tax.

Not to say I didn't warn you, but I told you so.

So what did I say?

During the upcoming Presidential election, whenever you hear the Democratic candidate, or your left leaning friends, spouting off about how Evil-Exxon-Mobil made the largest profit ever in the history of greed, please feel free to remind them of this fact.

Yes, Exxon may have made have made a profit in 2007 of $41 billion (an all-time record)...but it also paid $30 billion in taxes (also another all-time record).

So when the left complains that Oil company profits are "obscene", ask them if the think the related government profits are "obscene" as well.

For a little balance to what those pushing Windfall Profit taxes will tell you, check out these inconvenient facts:

From 2005:

"...over the past 25 years, oil companies directly paid or remitted more than $2.2 trillion in taxes, after adjusting for inflation, to federal and state governments — including excise taxes, royalty payments and state and federal corporate income taxes. That amounts to more than three times what they earned in profits during the same period, according to the latest numbers from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and U.S. Department of Energy."

From 2007:

While they were recording record profits last year, they were also writing checks to Uncle Sam to the tune of $100.7 billion -- two and a half times what they made in net profit. In fact, previous Tax Foundation research found that from 1977 to 2004, federal and state governments extracted $397 billion by taxing the profits of the largest oil companies and an additional $1.1 trillion in taxes at the pump. In today's dollars, that's $2.2 trillion.

From 2008:

In other words, just one corporation (Exxon Mobil) pays as much in taxes ($27 billion) annually as the entire bottom 50% of individual taxpayers, which is 65,000,000 people! Further, the tax rate for the bottom 50% is only 3% of adjusted gross income ($27.4 billion / $922 billion), and the tax rate for Exxon was 41% in 2006 ($67.4 billion in taxable income, $27.9 billion in taxes).

Here is a nice visualization (from 2005) of how government profits taxes have outstripped oil industry profits since the late '70s:


You are now free to go back to your Democratic propaganda induced stupor of bitterness....

Son, Russians Don't Take a Dump without a Plan

I'll tell you a little secret....it ain't just the Russkies. We do it too.

That's why I always love it when I see breathless (or brainless) press accounts that proclaim that the US has plans to strike/bomb some various country that we don't like.

Well......DUH! Of course we have a plan. Otherwise when it came time, we would be running around pulling stuff out our butts and gennerally not have a clue to intended effects and collateral damage estimates, etc....

So when I read things like "Russert says that NBC News has learned the U.S. has assembled military plans to strike targets in Iran..." I have to chuckle. Of course we do. It would be irresponsible not to have such plans.

The military has plenty of plans for plenty of 'contingencies', that they can pull of the shelf and adapt whenever they need them. But I guess hat little fact doesn't make good headlines.

Guns? What Guns?

Bob of Confederate Yankee by way of Pajamas Media, points out the plight of a city ravaged by Gun Control laws.

Fifty-four shootings in two weekends. Shot-up bodies recovered in groups of three and five. Is this Ramadi? Basra? No.

Welcome to Chicago.

I will revise and extend the remarks I made after the first weekend of violence in Chicago (This was in an email to Instapundit which he kindly chose to publish):

This violence really should be no surprise, since Chicago and Illinois itself have been failing to reach their political benchmarks for years now.

It is too bad there was not some powerful politician who might have served the Chicago area and brought them Change and Hope. If there was, we could blame him for the "complete failure" to achieve those political benchmarks and reduce sectarian strife.

Ken & Natasha?

There has to be some delicious irony that a dyed-in-the-wool Communist from a western democracy has been bested in a free election by a conservative named Boris.

Perhaps Red Ken will blame it all on "Moose and Squirrel", and will be heard yelling "Raskolnikov!" as he rides off into what is sure to be temporary retirement.

It's Not All About Hillary

So Hillary was on O'Reilly last night (and again tonight), and apparently was somewhat impressive. So much so that some on the conservative side of the aisle might even view her as acceptable. Heck some obscure internet pundits have declared that she might possibly be the "most uncompromising wartime President in U.S. history" (should that be 'herstory'?)

That may well be true, I dunno.

But I want to say this to all conservatives who think that perhaps things wouldn't be so bad if she were to get the nomination and then win the election....

This election ain't all about the war, and this election ain't all about Hillary.

The election is about all the issues, and the election is about all the people she would bring into the administration with her.

It has been proven time and again that a President is limited in what he actually *can* do. It is the politicos who are brought in to take over the vast federal bureaucracies and establish/implement their policies that are the ones who can do the most good....or the most damage.

So if you think that Hillary as a tough talking, uncompromising wartime president is acceptable, than you had better be ready to accept all the liberal and leftist activists who are going to take over leadership positions in Justice, Education, Immigration and Customs Enforcement , HHS, EPA, OMB, DHS, Defense, CIA, etc....

To make matters worse, since the Dems own (and will continue to own) both the House and the Senate, there will be no inclination to put forth "moderate" appointees in order to win confirmation. You can't filibuster everybody, doing so will get you ground up by the inevitable Clinton PA noise machine.

Thusly, Hillary should not be acceptable to any conservative just because she might talk a good game on one or two issues during the campaign. To believe otherwise, IMHO, is delusional....

Dude, Where's My Recession?

"Before you declare a recession, as many economic pundits have, shouldn’t the economy, well, actually recess a bit — if only for a quarter?"

Has the MSM got you convinced that we are in a recession? If so, take a read of two economists courtesy of Larry Kudlow....

Bottom Line: Out: Recession. In: Expansion.

I Hate Remakes....

I hate it when they remake a perfectly good movie....

"Faced with a possible campaign meltdown thanks to the incendiary remarks of Reverend Wright, Barack Obama tried to put his relationship with the problematic pastor behind him once and for all at a make or break press conference this afternoon."

"I never had spiritual relations with that man...."

Meh. I like the original better. It was a more fiery deception.